


Genealogy

by edenkings



Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Talents behind the scenes!, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9217550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenkings/pseuds/edenkings
Summary: Lucy Horvath is a Genealogist, a story of the families of FT&T in 23 parts.Drabble challenge!





	

**Genealogy:**

Lucy Horvath works for FT&T, as seen in 23 parts.

\--

 

1)

Lucy Horvath is a genealogist, and a geneticist (the former for interest value, and the second because the first doesn’t pay too well unless you back it up with something else). It seems almost too easy when she applies to Blundell’s medical as an afterthought to the job she really wants at the Ping Research Institute (and doesn’t get because she doesn’t have the experience).

She is nineteen (and her tertiary study debts are in the five-figure range) so she figures she will take what she gets. She gets the job at Blundell easily enough (the Horvath name opens doors).

 

 

2)

Earth Prime, Peter Reidinger IV, is an _asshole_.

Everyone says so (and thinks so) and they don’t scruple to be quiet about it.

Lucy meets Peter Reidinger IV the first time coming out of an elevator. She’s trying to exit at her floor, he doesn’t hesitate to bowl her over trying to get in.

He does not help her pick herself up off the floor, instead sending her a glance filled with the utmost contempt.

She misses her stop.

Earth Prime Peter Reidinger IV is an _asshole_ , Lucy thinks, _quietly to herself_ , because she is twenty and she isn’t stupid.

 

 

3)

The new Earth Prime is an improvement, personality wise, even if he is a colonial type. Blundell is up in arms over that. He might be good enough for Deneb tower, but who is he to come here and run FT&T?

Lucy is from Earth, she has never been off-world.

The Grens are notable in their support of the newcomer, however, and their favourite son Gollee has been seen out with this Raven person a few times.

He wins over the Maus, and the Owenses eventually, though the rest of the Reidingers and the Thigbits don’t think much of him.

 

4)

_They_ (They are the Fleet, the planetary administrations, the commercial conglomerates) seem to think The New Earth Prime is a soft touch, a colonial boonie pushover.

Lucy hears the gossip, and like everyone else in Blundell, she watches and she waits.

Blundell had learned quickly what it meant to be the man who single-handedly held off an alien invasion. The man who fired a missile back towards Earth, towards Callisto to prove a point. The man who had swept The Rowan of Callisto off her feet. That man.

Blundell watches the meetings between their Earth Prime and _Them_ with amusement.

 

 

6)

Siglen has passed away and Guzman is old, Earth Prime tells her about half way into their first conversation. They need more Talents, and soon! They have identified the genes for Talent, but it is unthinkable to tinker with genetics to improve a child.

To go the way of eugenics is inconceivable (pun intended, Jeff Raven grins).

_Find me the families who produce high Talents, find their genes, find good combinations that I might be able to persuade to have children I can enrol in FT &T._

Jeff Raven might be a favourite son, but they have little success on Deneb.

 

 

5)

The Raven and The Rowan go on to have a handful of children – who between them are far more than a handful to deal with.

There is jealousy and disbelief as the gossip goes around that the eldest three are likely Primes, as if the poor babes could choose their rating.

There is nastiness and spite, when the younger two do not rate as high as the rest, as if a T-2, and a T-3 are not thoroughly respectable ratings that would delight most Talented families.

Certainly Lucy, who is a T-4, doesn’t think less of young Larak and Ezro.

 

 

6)

Capella has been Capella for so long that her name has dropped from public consciousness. She does not stir from her Tower, both through disinclination and the inhibitions inflicted by Siglen.

Lucy discovers that she is Muy Thigbit, the pride of the Thigbits, though estranged by her position on Capella.

She has no intention of breeding, and, no, she has no interest in making her genes available for some other woman to bear. The thought is repugnant.

She is in her fifth decade by now, and the chances are infinitesimally low. Both know this. Earth Prime does not press her.

 

 

7)

At twenty five, Lucy finds herself meeting a parade of young unattached men. They’re running errands for Earth Prime or for Gollee Gren, or (most annoyingly) for her grandmother.

They’re all near her age, though variously Talented - usually in the T-3 to T-6 range. _All_ of them know what’s up, but no-one gets out of the Blundell Marriage Market unscathed or unattached.

She does take a liking to Hanser, a Capellan T-4 at Blundell for training. They don’t last long, as he must do his duty and return to Capella, and she has no interest in following him there.

 

 

8)

Torrin is Altairian, and a new Talent from a family of untalented. He can claim Welsh ancestry, and they later learn to everyone’s surprise that he is a distant cousin to The Rowan. He is initially predicted to be T-3, but after training comes out at T-2.

They start as friends. She takes him home to see what a Talented family is like – he meets Grandmother Horvath, Clan Matriarch. She approves, so then they date, then marry.

They have four children over ten years or so – Earth Prime is _delighted_ to personally approve the parental leave and bonuses each time.

 

 

9)

Vega’s Prime David Owens is a notorious old bachelor, completely uninterested in furthering the family, preferring to leave that to his (also T-1) brother Peter, his sister Marie and a series of cousins.

The Owens family had emerged as one of the earliest Talented families.  They were still firm residents of the Henner and Reidinger estates, and the Blundell facility. Daffyd Op Owen, the origin Talent had been Centre Director at Henner back in the early days, his daughter Rhyssa Owen-Ledhardt had later succeeded him. The clan had many children and needed no coercion to have more for the cause.

 

 

10)

The original Mau Talents, according to record (padded a little with family lore), were three brothers, triplets, who had an uncanny sense of where the others were, who could see through each other’s eyes, and speak through though to each other no matter the distance. They had been the foundation of Shanghai’s parapsychic centre, which became Shanghai Tower, and most of Tower staff could claim Mau ancestry.

In contrast to the replacement only policy of the Mau brothers’ time, there is the expectation of many children for each family, and this Jiangzi Mau, T-1, the Head of Shanghai Tower, encourages.

 

 

11)

David of Betelgeuse, David Maitland, is the second of that name to hold the post (the Maitland’s do not even begin to challenge the Reidingers, in particular, the Peter Reidingers of Earth, nor the Ravens). The elder David had nine children, but only his youngest son had been a Prime. The older children were Talented enough, one T-2 daughter, two T-3 children, the remaining five T-3s with varying skills, and their children were also highly Talented.

David snr. had died at a relatively young age, barely into his sixth decade, leaving his youngest son as Betelgeuse Prime at only eighteen.

 

 

12)

David jnr. has a protective streak, due the loss of his father at such an age. He has three T-1 children of five, far surpassing his father, though far less than Damia Gwyn-Raven. It is comparable to Rowan’s efforts, Earth Prime says to mollify an overprotective father, and how else could he treat Perry, Morgelle and Xahra, but like his own grandchildren?

They free each child, and later the T-2 daughter and T-5 son are offered postings off Betelgeuse. It’s no surprise to Lucy that they quickly marry and start their own families, and she adds them to her database.

 

 

13)

Lucy and Torrin’s children are all highly Talented – as expected with such parents. Lucy has no kinetic ability, and Torrin little telepathy, but all of their children are multiTalented, so both parents (and aunts and uncles and on one _memorable_ occasion Earth Prime) are required to get them out of messes all kinds. They rate as T-3s and T-2s, join FT &T (except black sheep Naval son) and are generally a credit to the family and their professions.

Lucy has grandchildren before she knows it, and finds herself becoming Horvath Clan Matriarch like her Grandmother before her, and she is _horrified_.

 

 

14)

Damia Gwyn-Raven has been _by far_ the most prolific breeder of Prime Talent, with an astonishing eight children, _all_ T-1s, though one child had gone towards Medical Talent Training. The T-2 father’s genes had helped, of course (though he was an unconventional choice in a mate) and Damia had been encouraged towards a long family.

Her elder siblings had also raised four and three Prime children respectively, a coup for the Ravens, at least it would be when they all grew up and took their places in FT&T. No-one can accuse Earth Prime’s family of failing to personally supply Talents.

 

 

15)

Lucy’s biggest “success” is on Capella – she surreptitiously arranges for the Luvarkai’s daughter Martia to meet the Sadaro’s younger son, Harfur. The teens are agreeable to each other as predicted. Both families have excellent Talented genes, and respectable standing in Capellan society – such is sufficient for the parents to arrange the marriage.

The younger Luvarkai daughter Tianame meets her own spouse in a Sadaro cousin. The three families, including the elder Sadaro brother’s children, are phenomenally successful, with _eight_ young potential T-1s, and a smattering of T-2s and 3s.

Getting them to _leave_ Capella’s Southern Continent’s Towers is a problem.

 

 

16)

There are, according to the recent Alliance census, 28 billion humans and 65 billion Mrdini within seventeen star systems, four naval fleets, twenty-nine major space stations and dockyards and a multitude of private space vessels. One in six hundred have some form of Talent, though that figure is greater on some worlds (Deneb, Capella), and lower on others (Spica, Procyon, Eridani), though the vast majority of Talent is low level prescience or ‘hunches’, or finders of some form. 10 million have self-identified as Talented in the census, and in that number 113 are Telepathic/Telekinetic Primes, the rarest of the rare.

 

 

17)

Mauli and Mick, the twins from Procyon, both marry sometime after they feel their responsibilities to The Rowan have ended. Their children are unremarkable (and few), though their (slightly greater in number) grandchildren are excellent Talents, and Lucy enjoys finding suitable people for them to be assigned to posts with in the hope they’ll make a match. It is a delicate dance she does with the thick-headed people in the next department over who assign Talents to postings, and as time goes on she gets better at getting both things right. The great- grandchildren will be something, Lucy knows it.

 

 

18)

Bastian and Maharanjani (and their offspring, and _their_ offspring) are largely self-sufficient. The Bastianmajanis (honouring their antecedents with their change in surname) have accrued great respect in FT &T over the years – Lucy has little influence on Altair, but then neither does Earth Prime wish to interfere so long as Altair Tower handles itself appropriately, which it always does.

They do have three Prime grandchildren, so the hands-off policy is not detrimental, and the eldest, Flavia (an excellent young woman), chooses her T-3 cousin as a spouse. Earth Prime merely requires the assurance that there are no concerns genetically (there aren’t).

 

19)

Lucy’s favourite job is tracking the family of new Talents that occasionally crop up. Every child nowadays is tested on multiple occasions– the Talent Testing departments are the largest _by far_ in FT &T.

Any T-1 (impossibly rare), T-2 (uncommon in the extreme) or T-3 (it happens once a year or so) who declares no history of Talent, has their extended family out to three generations offered more extensive testing, and they have genetic screening done if so consented. It’s amazing, the number of parents who say they just have ‘hunches’, but who are sure that they’re not Talented at all!

 

 

20)

Earth Prime puts his foot down with his siblings’ children and grandchildren. The Raven clan of Deneb (and sundry Eagles, Cranes, Hawkes and Sparrows) are highly Talented. Five of the kids are likely T-1s, and a double dozen T-2s and T-3s. With the Fleet expanding in capacity to counter the Hiver menace, Earth Prime _must_ recruit mercilessly from his relatives. Filling positions solves one problem, but the trade-off is accusations of nepotism.

_Anywhere else we can find unrelated Talents?_ Earth Prime asks her, to which she shrugs for what else has she been trying to do for nearly 50 years?

 

 

21)

Perry Maitland is not-so-subtly introduced to Adela (T-3 kinetic) after Lucy gets one of her underlings to hint in Gollee Gren’s direction about an assignment to Betelgeuse for the woman. Perry, much like David, is turning out to be the type who likes to smother his relatives (his sisters have borne the brunt so far). Adela’s a beautiful woman and a decent kinetic, but she is not the brightest and she has no ambition (Adela is, at least, _aware_ of her faults though won’t change). They suit each other well enough, and Lucy gets a decent bonus at year’s end.

 

22)

By the time that Earth Prime’s eldest grandchildren are grown, Lucy heads an _entire department_. The Ravens are a priority as they breed Talent so well. Grayhan sorts himself out before they realise, and has high-potential twin sons. Thian, Rojer, Barry and Josh pick their own mates too, a triumph for the males of the family. Laria and Anneliese, the eldest girls, are more difficult as they don’t take to any of the Talents Earth Prime arranges them to meet. They have more options now than anyone did even twenty years ago, but Earth Prime does have his dynastic notions.

 

23)

Lucy’s retirement party is on the company, and extremely well-attended. She’s in her seventh decade, young for an FT&T retirement, but she has niggling health concerns.

It surprises no-one when Earth Prime and many of the Raven family as might be spared attend.

She hasn’t been discreet about the nature of her work, nor who has directed it. The marriage mart is a running joke, but as many find their spouses through it, no one really minds the matchmaking. Many of her pairings come, and bring their offspring. It’s heartening to know how many children exist because of her efforts.

 

 


End file.
